Katanagatari was done in the hour-long format, but that was also only one episode per month, not week. Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari was also a recent hour-long format show, but again that's an OVA so it doesn't count the same. Hour-long TV anime just isn't a priority.

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And aside from that, I gotta say, sadly, this entire hypothesis about fans' expectations and how that affects the product being made in Japan... is completely false. Because, although Western sales are a nice bonus, Japanese fans are priority number 1 with anime companies. No mistake. We buy what we are given, sure, but that doesn't necessarily translate back overseas as to what gets made and what doesn't.

I've concluded that we matter somewhat, enough for an occasional product that might greatly appeal to western tastes like Badlands Rumble, but we're completely beyond the scope when it comes to the day to day season TV anime. Though it's not like the stuff is exclusively made for us unless we pay (Big O 2, Marvel, Batman) for it, the Japanese fans still matter first.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there has been a recent (small) wave of fifty-minute OVAs and movies, including Break Blade, Gundam Unicorn and Towa no Quon. Of course, they don't have the same time and budgetary-constraints as a weekly television series, so they are not proof that Anime series with double-length episodes are viable.

I agree with Brian about categorizing anime fans. Like a lot of geeky subcultures, the general anime fandom is "divided by a common interest" (a phrase I originally heard applied to gaming). We are all fans of Japanese pop culture of some kind, which already puts us in a sometimes-ridiculed minority by the mainstream (local news coverage of Sakuracon, for example). There's no reason for us to further splinter ourselves. Like what you like, let others like what they like, and maybe learn about some cool anime/manga/whatever from one another.

I do find anime humor highly repetitive, but the same is true for anime "drama" and the overall content. There are shows with a more creative or fresh or witty kind of humor, but they're not the majority, so you have to go looking for them. Current examples which I think are different in one way or other from the mentioned "fanservice/tsundere/pure slapstick" kind of humor would be Joshiraku or Gakkatsu, Polar Bear Cafe, maybe Space Brothers (not pure comedy), or generally shows that are based on girls' and women's mangas.

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many (if not all) Japanese comedy is either about one of two things - fanservice/boobs and tsundere females.

The fanservice that involves panty shots and bouncing boobs etc. is really limited to animes. You rarely see jokes like that in other Japanese tv formats. But I guess the question was really only about animes.

"Because, although Western sales are a nice bonus, Japanese fans are priority number 1 with anime companies."

This is something that a lot of western anime/manga fans tend to forget. Anime's target audience is Japanese people. So when I read stuff about non-Japanese fans complaining about other non-Japanese fans about their tastes in anime ruining the market, I just write it off as a pretentious and self-righteous idiot who thinks they are on top of the world.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that there has been a recent (small) wave of fifty-minute OVAs and movies, including Break Blade, Gundam Unicorn and Towa no Quon.

Actually Broken Blade was a series of movies.

Anyways, as for repetition, it's been long since established that humans like what's familiar. They are drawn to what they know and are comfortable with and shy away from the unknown.

One thing I learned in psychology class that I found particularly interesting is why people tend to not like photos of themselves. They're so used to seeing their reversed images in the mirror that the photos look off to them.

Also even if they don't like something at first enough repetition will change that, such as if you listen to a song you don't like over and over. Eventually you'll start to like it.

Regarding the lead time of an hour-long anime series, I don't think Brian's admittedly 'simple math' of doubling a six-month cycle to twelve months is accurate. Granted, some points in the production schedule are single-person bottlenecks (scriptwriting, voice acting), but most of it is stuff that can, and often is, done by more than one person concurrently (in-betweening, color, storyboarding). Once the story (or even just the story outline) is set, it's mostly just a matter of man-hours to produce the finished anime. The doubling of the per-episode budget compared to half-hour series is applicable, though.

A better question is if there are stories out there that would benefit from the hour format, and have enough plot outlined in advance to make it worth the effort and cost. The follow-up question is if the Japanese TV market is interested in changing their half-hour per show paradigm to accommodate such a work.

Anime does sometimes reuse background art, but where in live-action one simply moves the camera to get a different background on a pre-existing set, in animation one must re-draw the background of a new shot from a different perspective. Presumably, one can go back to the set design information and use that to render the new perspective, so it's not a total 'from-scratch' effort, but it is a new artwork to be produced.

I think my biggest problem with anime comedies is that they CAN be done well, they just aren't. I've seen a number of good comedy anime but it's difficult to find new ones among all of the crap.

I think part of it is a fundamental problem with using fanservice as comedy. Visual puns are often funnier when they're understated. My perfect example is K-ON! when (spoiler just in case) spoiler[Mio trips on stage and flashes everyone.] In the manga they have a played straight panty shot that made me roll my eyes, but in the anime they cut to a full screen striped pattern, (then even zoom out to show it's actually a bowl of rice), which made me laugh hysterically. My point is that comedy is often funnier when it's subtle, and fanservice by nature is the complete opposite.

Of course, I am female, so it doesn't help that fanservice to me is usually just boring.

Even those of us that get some enjoyment from watching shlocky fanservice romcoms are tired of some of those cliched 'gags'. I think the "Walks in while changing/falls on boobs > Gets punched" thing tops the list of things that get complained about by people that otherwise like these shows.

I've said this myself many, many times.

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Just because something is in a show doesn't mean that people who like the show are watching it for that or even like that aspect. There also seems to be an assumption that someone who likes watching those simply CAN'T also like whatever it is the person decrying it happens to like. That people who get enjoyment out of fanservice shows or harem-ish romcoms can't possibly ALSO like the other stuff. Just because we get some enjoyment out of the 'mediocre' or 'bad' stuff doesn't mean that's all we like and don't also want other, different, better shows.

Absolutely true; in fact, I also found the implication of the question a bit insulting.

In any given season I'm typically following at least one fan service-laden series (in the current season it's So I Can't Play H! because, dammit, I like attractively-drawn nudity and I make no apologies for it), but I also fully recognize such fare as being fully disposable; series like that rarely fall into the "enduring" category. That I watch such fare regularly doesn't keep me from also watching and lauding fare that does have enduring quality, such as Haibane Renmei, Koi Kaze, or Living for the Day After Tomorrow, all of which I've watched and/or rewatched in the past four months.

So yeah, making blanket assumptions about people who watch fan service-heavy series is just as dangerous as making blanket assumptions about fans of any anime subgenre.

I don't mind that people don't find it funny, but I never understand how some people take Winry hitting Ed with a wrench (or other similar scenes in anime) seriously as though it's promoting physical abuse. These scenes are not literal.

And it's not just girls doing this to guys in anime, although that might be true for the majority of series, just watch Nodame Cantabile.

It's comedy pure and simple. To me it's more a physical reprsentation of the character's feelings. I actually love these love/hate relationships, to me they are very much in the spirit of a classic Screwball comedy.

What you're seeing more often these days are movie serials, which up until the mid 00s would have likely be greenlit as OVAs instead. I can't recall too many older films that only ran as hour-long formats: Weathering Content, Five Star Stories, the two Silent Mobius films. Even less, ones that had several episodes comprimising a larger story told in short bits like Break Blade, Kara no Kyoukai, Towa no Quon, Mardock Scramble, and possibly others. That was basically what the OVA for was developed for.

With theatrical and home video filling that niche for hour-long episodic content, using TV anime slots just isn't a necessity like it is for American dramas. No one here buys a show a single episode at a time sight-unseen (Gundam Unicorn), and no one pays typical prices for a 58 minute film in theaters (Mardock Scramble). So where can you realistically place a 45-59 minute episode of a show? On the networks, cable channels, or premium cable with varying advertisement time. There's just no pressing need for for 45 minute on-TV anime unless it's some kind of AT-X initial airing of an OVA.

I don't mind that people don't find it funny, but I never understand how some people take Winry hitting Ed with a wrench (or other similar scenes in anime) seriously as though it's promoting physical abuse. These scenes are not literal.

Actually, they are literal. No-one but yourself is denying that Winry actually hit Ed with a wrench.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and I've finally got it. The problem is that there are metric ass-ton of different genres of anime comedy, yet we are treating it all under the same umbrella, as if all comedies are Ero Comedies. But they're not: there are rapidfire gag shows like Galaxy Angel, absurdist explorations like Arakawa Under the Bridge, and satirical send-ups like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. There are lighthearted schoolgirl comedies like Azumanga Daioh and shows filled with loving parodies, Hayate the Combat Butler. You can have romantic comedies played straight up like with Natsu no Arashi, historical comedies like Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran, and fantasy comedies like Slayers. There are harem comedies like Seitokai no Ichizon and reverse harem comdies like Tenshi na Konamaiki. There are cute, sugary shows like Kamichu and serious, violent comedies like parts of Lupin the Third. And there is the completely over the top violence in Ramen Fighter Miki and the whatever the hell Elf Princess Rane was about. And there are Ero Comedies and Ecchi Comedies, which are different in style and tone. (Example, Mitsudomoe is a Ecchi Comedy, High School DxD is an Ero Comedy). So I can understand a person saying, I don't like Ero Comedies, but there are so many other funny shows, with so many other methods of comedy. Sure, you don't like the whole 'fall into crotch, get punched' gag. But what about something like Dragon Half, which has a character named 'Dick Saucer'? I dare you say that name with a straight face. What about the nonstop sheer insanity of Excel Saga? What about the time in Galaxy Angel when they accidentally destroyed the entire universe? Or when Captain Tylor blows the chance to have sex with multiple hot girls because he's trying to surreptitiously fix a broken porno tape? Okay, so maybe there are a lot more stupid ero comedy shows then other comedic efforts, but it's a plurality, not a majority. So what? Nobody is forcing you to watch these shows. There is no point in going into histrionics because one season of anime has too many titty shows.

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